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IBM takes Swift to the Cloud

At IBM InterConnect, last week in Las Vegas, IBM announced that it has bought Swift to the Cloud, with Swift runtime and Swift Package Catalogue. In both cases, IBM is hoping to further enable developers creating apps for the enterprise.

When Apple open sourced Swift last year, there was a huge amount of interest in how it could be used across other platforms and in the cloud.

At IBM InterConnect, last week in Las Vegas, IBM announced that it has bought Swift to the Cloud, with Swift runtime and Swift Package Catalogue. In both cases, IBM is hoping to further enable developers creating apps for the enterprise.

Whilst IBM claimed to be the first cloud provider to enable the development of apps in native Swift, Swift can already run on Ubuntu, which is supported by Amazon Web Services and other cloud providers. In the case of IBM, however, developers can play in the Swift Sandbox provided by IBM, start building applications on Bluemix and quickly deploy them, or begin creating and sharing packages to the Swift Package Catalog.

In the two and a half months since Apple open sourced the Swift language and IBM released its Swift Sandbox, more than 100,000 developers from around the world have used it. The IBM Swift Sandbox, for server-side programming in Swift, has seen more than half a million code runs executed in the Sandbox to date.

IBM is committed to maturing the use of Swift as a server-side language for enterprise development. Traditionally, different technologies are used to develop the application on the client and the business logic on the server. By bringing Swift beyond the client to the server, IBM is breaking down barriers between frontend and back-end development. This can provide enterprises with a single language to build rich experiences and back-end business logic.

Enterprises can benefit from increased speed and efficiency while simultaneously taking advantage of growing availability of Swift skills. Using Swift on the server also introduces a simpler, more secure toolchain for end-to-end application development.

Developers can start exploring the benefits of Swift on the IBM Cloud in three ways:

Experiment in the Swift Sandbox: Quickly experiment with open sourced Swift, ramp up your skill set and learn what Swift can do for your enterprise by checking out new enhancements to the Swift Sandbox.

Develop and Deploy: Start building end-to-end applications on Bluemix and quickly deploy them with Kitura, a new open source web server released by IBM on both OSX and Linux.

Share Swift Resources: Leverage code across projects by creating packages and submitting them to the Swift Package Catalog on Bluemix to encourage sharing of new Swift resources with the global developer community.

Interested in knowing more about Swift? Click here to read the top reasons Mubaloo has embraced Swift for iOS apps.